The Outliers

February 6, 2016February 7, 2016

Temporary immunity undermines the theoretical basis of herd immunity

“The original concept of herd immunity is that when a population experiences the natural disease that natural immunity would be achieved—a robust, qualitatively superior natural herd immunity within the population that would then protect other people from getting the disease in other age groups. It’s the way infectious diseases, historically [have worked]… I’ll just take influenza… When you have enough circulating influenza of a certain strain in a population, the population achieves, at some point, a herd immunity effect, because enough people have experienced it, they’re protected naturally, and then that protects and confers protection on other people.

But the vaccinologists have adopted this idea of vaccine-inducedherd immunity. The problem with it is that all vaccines only confer temporary protection, at least the vaccines that we have been using, only confer temporary protection. And pertussis vaccine is one of the best examples. … When you look at effectiveness, rather than risks… just look at the effectiveness of either the whole cell or this acellular pertussis vaccine, what you find is that there’s a lot of problems with extended immunity—vaccine-induced immunity. So you have a very short shelf life, basically. And what is the reason for that?

Well, pertussis vaccines have been used for about 50 years, 50 to 60 years. And the organism has started to evolve… to become vaccine resistant. And I can read you the results from just one study looking at what is the pertussis organism all about now, B. (Bordetella) pertussis.

Results showed that the progressive gene loss occurred in finished B. pertussis strains isolated during a period of 50 years and confirmed that B. pertussis is dynamic and continuously evolving, suggesting that the bacterium may use gene loss as one strategy to adapt to highly immunized populations.

Because you know what? Every life form wants to live, wants to survive. Universal principle. And viruses and bacteria are no exception. And when you put a pressure on virus or bacteria that’s circulating with the use of a vaccine that contains the lab-altered form of that virus or bacteria, it doesn’t seem that it would be illogical to understand that that organism is going to fight to survive, it’s going to find a way to adapt in order to survive. And I think this is not something that is really understood, generally, by the public… that vaccines do not confer the same type of immunity that natural exposure to disease does.

In most cases, natural exposure to disease will give you a longer lasting, more robust, qualitatively superior immunity, because it gives you both cell-mediated immunity and humoral immunity… humoral is the antibody production. The way you measure vaccine-induced immunity by how high are the antibody titers, how many anitibodies you have. But the problem is the cell-mediated immunity is very important as well. Most vaccines evade cell-mediated immunity and go straight for the antibodies… which is only one part of immunity. And that’s been the big problem with the production of vaccines all along… has been this idea of how do you induce both cell-mediated—innate immunity—and humoral, or learned, antibody immunity.

So I think that it’s unfair and absolutely scientifically incorrect to blame pertussis outbreaks in California, or anywhere else in the country, on unvaccinated people, because the truth is that person coughing next to you on the bus, who has B. pertussis, may be vaccinated OR unvaccinated. In fact, this watchdog institute took a look at whooping cough outbreaks in California in 2010, and what they came to the conclusion was that when they looked at the immunization status of the people who got pertussis in those pertussis outbreaks, they found that the majority of them had been vaccinated. So the whooping cough outbreaks in California, again, you can be vaccinated and still have whooping cough and you won’t even potentially know that you have whooping cough if you’re an adult, because you may not have the whoop… you may just present with a really bad cough.

Now, what they’re saying is this is a justification for giving more vaccine. Is that logical if the organism has evolved to become vaccine resistant? The other thing, if you look in the medical literature you find, is that B. parapertussis, which was never covered in either the whole cell vaccine DPT, or DTap… parapertussis is on the rise. Well, why would that be true? It imitates pertussis. It seems to be milder than B. pertussis but it imitates the same symptoms of pertussis, it’s a respiratory infection. Why would parapertussis be on the rise? Well, probably for the same reason that there’s gene loss in the B. pertussis, and that is you have strains that are going to come in and be more prevalent when you’re trying to suppress another kind of strain… in this case, B. pertussis.

So, nature has a way of adapting to the pressures that are placed upon it. And I don’t understand why there’s not more recognition that vaccines are not the only way to stay healthy or to prevent disease and infection, and that the way you really achieve true health is not a pill or a vaccine.”

— Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC)